Thickener is a kind of polymer additive, which is widely used in textile printing, food, construction and other fields because it can quickly improve the viscosity and rheology of the system. Adding a small amount of thickener to the required system can greatly improve the viscosity of the system and make it meet the requirements of process and rheology. Printing is the process of applying dyes or coatings locally to the fabric, so that the fabric can obtain patterns. In the printing process, in order to prevent the infiltration of printing patterns, dyes and drugs must be prepared into a printing paste with a certain viscosity in order to be clearly and firmly fixed on the fabric. Printing paste (thickener) is the main component of printing paste, so thickener has an important impact on the printing effect of textile printing.
Before synthetic thickeners appeared, natural or natural modified thickeners were always used in textile printing. Later, with the development of polymer chemical industry, synthetic thickeners appeared, and then they were widely used. The main action mechanism is: the macromolecules of the thickener polymer absorb the water in the system to stretch the macromolecular chain to achieve the purpose of thickening, or the polymer macromolecules form micelles and form a three-dimensional network structure with water to restrict the movement of free water in the system to achieve the purpose of thickening. In the 1970s, a research institute in the United States first prepared a super absorbent resin by hydrolysis of polypropylene grafted starch. Since then, the research and production of super absorbent resin have developed rapidly. Thickener is an important branch of super absorbent resin, which has also developed rapidly. Since the development of thickeners, anionic polyacrylate thickeners have the strongest thickening ability among synthetic thickeners, but polyacrylate thickeners generally have the problem of poor electrolyte resistance. In most cases, some electrolytes will inevitably be used in textile printing paste, and thickeners with poor electrolyte resistance can not meet the requirements, Therefore, it is particularly important to develop polyacrylate thickener with strong electrolyte resistance.
